The SubGenius Psychlopaedia of Slack: The Bobliographon is—how to put this—the most unusual text most folk will ever encounter. Its Fort Worth–bred author-editor midwifed the birth of the for-profit Church of the SubGenius (“the only religion to pay its taxes”) more than 25 years ago and remains the wizard behind the curtain of the postmodern (some say satirical) faith to this day.
Where and when exactly did the Church of the SubGenius first appear? Doctrine has it that the SubGenius concept was first delivered to the Saint of Sales, J. R. “Bob” Dobbs, by ageless alien space monster JHVH-1 in 1953, in Bob’s rumpus room in the basement of his house in Wichita, Kansas, where he was living at the time. I personally caught the SubGenius concept like a sudden illness, or a bolt of badly aimed lightning, in late 1978 while standing with my new friend Dr. Philo Drummond and my old, late friend Dr. X [Monte Dhooge] on Merrimac Avenue in Dallas. The three of us had been wondering why we weren’t rich yet, even though we were “obviously” smarter than the average Joe. (We had a lot to learn, especially about smartness.) Philo said, “Well, it’s probably because we’re not geniuses, but just … subgeniuses.” Upon hearing that word, suddenly I knew what all my otherwise useless skills were good for: identifying and corralling an entire subspecies—or überspecies—of Homo sapiens sapiens and making money off of them.
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